Slave Owning Mascots: Ole Miss vs Michigan State

Slave Owner

   While mainstream media recently reported that students at the University of Mississippi have voted to replace Colonel Reb with a more politically correct mascot, the truth is that the students have voted to simply have a mascot after University officials banned the Colonel in 2003, citing the mascot’s likeness to a pre civil war plantation, AKA, slave owner. While the University still profits by selling the perceived likeness of a possible slave owner on bumper stickers, tee shirts, etc., Ole Miss sports teams have been forced to compete for seven years without a sweat soaked, vision impaired caricature scaring the piss out of every child in the first ten rows.    While this has been the subject of heated debate, we have turned a blind eye to a University many miles north of the Mason-Dixon line, in East Lansing Michigan, which employs a mascot so steeped in the institution of slavery, so devoid of any semblance of respect for equality that it has caused me to lose sleep many nights during football season.
   Let’s take a historical look at Spartans, and Michigan State’s blatant insensitivity and lack of respect for human rights by glorifying such a mascot. While ancient Greece is noted by most historians as being the birthplace of democracy and the resulting empowerment of the average citizen, Sparta was a city-state within the Greek Empire that made antebellum American South look like a social utopia. While the Athenian economy was based on trade, the Spartan economy was based solely on conquering and enslaving its neighbors. Being quite adept at this enterprise resulted in such a large population of Messenian slaves (helots) that Sparta was forced to deviate from the prevailing Greek political philosophy and became a militaristic totalitarian state simply to control its massive slave population. While fewer than one third of families in the American South owned a slave at the peak of the institution, Sparta employed a socialized distribution of land whereby every Spartan owned land, and every Spartan’s land was worked by slaves in order to allow full time military duty.  In fact, the slave population swelled so dramatically in comparison to the Spartans themselves that they came up with two really spiffy ways to balance out the numbers and prevent a possible slave uprising. The first was something called crypteia. This was a human hunting season each year when Spartan warriors were encouraged to roam the countryside, murdering slaves. Much like modern day hunters who covet deer with large antler racks, the Spartan warriors competed to kill the largest and most fit slaves, thereby eliminating the most physically threatening of potential rebellion leaders. The other was the institutionalized rape of  helot women by Spartan warriors. The resulting children were considered half citizens and allowed (forced) to become a Spartan warrior. Unless the child was female. They were killed on the spot or abandoned and left for dead.
   I speak for the Messenian Greek minority in particular and supporters of basic human rights and equality in general when I say this cannot stand! Michigan State University must immediately cease and desist in the glorification of this symbol of slavery. Power to the people! But they can still profit from sales of bumper stickers, etc with the Spartan likeness.